From The Pastor​

Please accept my heartfelt thanks for all the cards, gifts, prayers, and yummy treats that I received this Christmas season. Your continued generosity to the parish and to me personally is much appreciated.

As we begin a new calendar year, I ask for God’s continued blessing on our parish as we seek to better meet the spiritual and practical needs of our faith community. This promises to be a very exciting year here at St. Peter’s.

Joseph and Mary, Our Blessed Mother, are two towers of faith. Both had rather frightening encounters with angels, which surely would have caused fear in the bravest of us. They were small in the eyes of the world and how they responded to their heavenly invitations allowed them to grow to great heights in their faith. They have become symbols of lives called to be trustingly out of control, but whose lives were given to bring life not destruction. The reality of their trust becomes the deeper reality of God’s love for the rest of us.

In our world that is too often overwrought with fear and hatred, we need to be reminded that God has chosen us to be instruments of love and peace. None of us is insignificant in God’s plan. God has always taken the lowly and the seemingly powerless, to showcase the force of his faithfulness to us and the might of his mercy.

Joseph and Mary continue to encourage us to remain faithful even when our lives appear to be completely out of our control. They show us that this feeling of abandon can actually be freeing as we allow God to take over. He has sent us his son, Jesus, Emmanuel, God is with us. May we not be afraid to welcome Him into our hearts anew this Christmas.

I am happy to announce that I will be leading a pilgrimage to Poland and the Czech Republic from September 18-28, 2017. We will be visiting Czestochowa, the Divine Mercy Shrine in Lagiewniki, Wadowice (birthplace of St. John Paul II), and the Loreto Shrine in Prague, among many others. Detailed brochures can be found in the narthex. The group of pilgrims, who traveled to the Holy Land in November, 2015, had a wonderful time. I am confident this trip will be an equally spirit-lifting experience. After the holidays, there will be an informational meeting. Please, stay tuned.

During the season of Advent, the Lord calls us to prepare his way, like John the Baptist. Our Holy Father, Pope Francis, asks that we do this foremost by allowing our inner joy to shine forth in our service to others. By living our faith we engage in the important and necessary work of evangelization. It is not usually our words that move people, but rather our faith lived out authentically.

When people see that we have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and that this relationship influences every aspect of our lives, we help others to prepare the way for the Lord in their own hearts. This relationship must lead us away from being judgmental and self-centered. Instead the joy that comes from our lived experience of God’s love and mercy, along with our willingness to share it, can go far to dispel the darkness in the world around us.